Volume 152, Issue 14

Students valued Professor Tanya Leise, who passed away on Jan. 18, for her patience, warmth, and care.

Students Remember Professor Tanya Leise

Julia Gentin ’26 Senior Staff Writer

Tanya Leise, Brian E. Boyle professor in mathematics and computer science and the first woman mathematician tenured at the college, died on Jan. 18 after persevering through a cancer diagnosis.

Leise began teaching at the college in 2004. Her focus on applied math, as opposed to the theoretical perspective many Amherst math classes center on, revolutionized the department. And her research transformed the field at large.

Having invested herself deeply in the college, Leise’s death has had a heartbreaking resonance across campus. For their part, students loved Leise for her patient, accommodating teaching style, and the

FEATURES 11

Liz Agosto, Head of Student Affairs, Dean of Students, Steps Down

Liam Archacki ’24 Editor-in-Chief

Liz Agosto, chief student affairs officer and dean of students, officially stepped down from her posts on Tuesday, Jan. 31. She made the decision in order to allow herself greater flexibility to support and care for her family, according to a Jan. 12 email from President Michael Elliott announcing the change.

contemporary relevance of her classes.

Cassandra Jin ’24, who researched circadian rhythms with Leise in the summer of 2021, said that Leise was “extremely patient.”

“She was accommodating and really smart,” Jin said. “She made us feel like she needed us even when she probably didn’t. She had a very sweet, warm personality”

The content of her courses like “Voting and Elections” and “Math Modeling,” was also highly impactful, helping students see that “there was a goal to learning all of the math,” said Jack Trent ’23.

“Where a class like ’‘Groups, [Rings, and Fields]’ isn’t going to come up in conversation, ’‘Voting and Elections’ is,” Trent said.

As Massachusetts considered

Quick Questions: Caelen McQuilkin '24E totals the monetary costs of the dorm damage this year, following up on previous reporting.

approval voting, Trent was able to integrate course topics into talking points on campus.

Trent described Leise’s “deep-seated confidence, moving through lectures with an air of calm.”

“She was going through complicated material but presented it so well and so assuredly. It made students feel like there was not a high cost in learning material,” Trent said.

Although Trent took both of his classes with Leise during the pandemic, she was “constantly checking in and we had great-natured interactions.”

Beyond her interactions with students, Leise played an invaluable role in the math department at the college by serving as depart-

OPINION 15

ment chair, math colloquia organizer, and comprehensive exam director. She also created the college’s applied mathematics curriculum.

“Tanya will be greatly missed by the Amherst community, for which she gave so much,” said Catherine Epstein, provost and dean of the faculty, in a campus-wide email on Jan. 20.

Leise graduated with honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in mathematics, and received both an M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mathematics from Texas A&M University.

With widely cited research pertaining to biomathematics, mathematical modeling, and circadian rhythms, Leise’s impact extends far

Continued on page 3

Mental Health: Gabriel Proia '25 explains how today's mental health crises can be perpetuated by a desire for productivity in the market.

The chief student affairs officer is responsible for overseeing the functions of the Office of Student Affairs (OSA), which is responsible for all facets of student life. The dean of students typically has a more refined focus within the OSA, managing housing, student activities, and the resource centers, among other areas.

Agosto joined the college as dean of students in June 2019. She assumed her second role atop the OSA after the departure of the previous chief student affairs officer, Karu Kozuma, in 2021.

In an email on Jan. 25, Elliott announced that Angie Tissi-Gassoway, who had spent the past 14 months as interim chief equity and inclusion officer, would serve as chief student affairs officer

Continued on page 3

ARTS&LIVING 19

Time-Warped Records: Alden Parker '26 reviews Paul Simon's 1986 classic "Graceland" in the first installment of his new series.

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

News POLICE LOG

>>Dec. 6, 2022

11:34 a.m. Amherst College Police

A false license was confiscated by ACPD.

>>Dec. 8, 2022

1:19 a.m. Mead Art Museum

ACPD responded to the report of people on the roof of the museum. All individuals were identified and will be referred to the office of student conduct.

10:25 a.m. Campus Grounds

The Detective Sergeant issued a trespass notice to a person not affiliated with the College based on an ongoing investigation

>>Dec. 9, 2022

1:31 p.m. Bike Path

A report was received about a car driving on the bike path. The call was transferred to Amherst Police as it was their jurisdiction.

3:25 p.m. South Pleasant St

A call was received of a person yelling at cars at the intersection. The call was transferred to Amherst Police as it was in their jurisdiction.

7:24 p.m. Off Campus Location

ACPD conducted a motor vehicle stop of a reported erratic operator on College St. Amherst Police were unavailable. A warning was given.

>>Dec. 10, 2022

3:08 p.m. Jenkins Hall

ACPD took a report of a theft of a coat.

>>Dec. 11, 2022

9:37 p.m. Lipton House

ACPD responded to a report

of a suspicious person in the common area of the residence hall. The male was identified as being houseless and was sent on his way.

>>Dec. 15, 2022

4:31 p.m. Amherst College Police

An employee reported receiving suspicious text messages asking them to purchase Steam gift cards.

>>Dec. 20, 2022

12:26 a.m. College St

A student reported a suspicious person possibly following them while walking near College Street. ACPD responded to the area and the individual was gone upon arrival.

4:08 p.m. Valentin Res Hall

ACPD took possession of drug paraphernalia after a CDC discovered it in plain view during room inspections.

4:10 p.m. Valentine Res Hall

ACPD took possession of a fake ID after it was found by a CDC during room inspections.

8:08 p.m. Humphries House

ACPD responded to take possession of psilocybin mushrooms that were found during room inspections.

>>Dec. 21, 2022

11:22 a.m. Mayo Smith Hall

ACPD responded to take possession of drug paraphernalia that was found in plain view during room inspections by OSA.

3:54 p.m. Mayo Smith Hall

ACPD responded to take possession of drug paraphernalia that was found in plain

view during room inspections by OSA.

>>Dec. 22, 2022

12:59 p.m. South Pleasant St ACPD requested a person previously trespassed from campus to stay off campus.

7:07 p.m. Off Campus Location

ACPD notified Northampton PD of a request for a well being check of a person in their city.

>>Dec. 29, 2022

9:29 p.m. Beneski Earth Sci & Natural History Museum

ACPD responded to ACPD, AFD and Facilities Operations responded to a fire alarm caused by an issue with the heating system prefire alarm caused by cooking smoke.

4:10 p.m. Amherst College Police

ACPD issued a trespass notice to an individual who was asked to stay off campus.

>>Jan. 1, 2023

1:46 a.m. Moore Hall

ACPD referred an individual to the Office of Student Affairs for possessing liquor underage.

2:29 a.m. Off Campus Location

ACPD assisted APD in placing a person in protective custody.

>>Jan. 3, 2023

2:29 a.m. Off Campus Location

ACPD assisted APD in placing a person in protective custody.

>>Jan. 5, 2023

6:47 p.m. Book and Plow Farm

An officer heard possible gunshots in the area of the Book and Plow. A check

of the area did not locate a source.

>>Jan. 6, 2023

4:03 p.m. Wilson Admissions

ACPD checked on an individual who needed assistance in making a delivery.

10:08 p.m. Northampton Road

ACPD assisted APD on a motor vehicle stop.

>>Jan. 9, 2023

8:15 a.m. Alumni House

ACPD took the report of a past burglary after a staff member reported evidence of someone sleeping in the building after hours. Items were reported stolen as well.

>>Jan. 13, 2023

3:36 p.m. Tuttle Farm

A Sergeant investigated a car parked at Tuttle Farm. The occupants had no affiliation with the College and were asked to leave.

>>Jan. 17, 2023

12:14 p.m. Amherst College Police

ACPD dispatch received a 2111 hang-up call. When attempting to contact the caller they could not be reached.

4:46 p.m. Morris Pratt Hall

ACPD took a report of vandalism to an entryway door.

>>Jan. 18, 2023

2:24 p.m. Lipton House

An officer discovered an exit sign that had been vandalized and a report was taken.

>>Jan. 21, 2023

11:44 a.m. Lyceum

ACPD took a report of suspicious activity within the construction site.

>>Jan. 22, 2023

2:26 a.m. Hitchcock Hall

Community Safety responded to a noise complaint. A group was asked to lower the volume on music.

>>Jan. 24, 2023

4:31 p.m. Book and Plow Farm

An officer conducted a motor vehicle stop of a vehicle being operated in an unsafe manner. The operator was given a verbal warning.

>>Jan. 26, 2023

8:41 p.m. South Pleasant Street

A town resident complained about students not using the crosswalks or crosswalk lights along South Pleasant St.

9:31 p.m. Morris Pratt Hall

ACPD took a report of vandalism that was discovered by Community Safety.

>>Jan. 26, 2023

11:19 p.m. Charles Drew House ACPD and AFD responded to a fire alarm caused by marijuana smoke.

>>Jan. 31, 2023

3:27 p.m. Orr Lot

ACPD conducted a motor vehicle stop of a car being operated by a person with a suspended license. The person will be summoned to the Eastern Hampshire District Court.

>>Jan. 31, 2023

2:09 p.m. Webster Circle

ACPD took a report of vandalism to a statue. to the Eastern Hampshire District Court.

>>Feb. 3, 2023

11:13 a.m. Tuttle Farm

ACPD investigated a vehicle that was parked out in a field. The operator was spoken to and sent on their way.

Elliott Lauds Agosto’s Leadership During Pandemic

Continued from page 1

on an interim basis. No candidate to fill the role of dean of students has yet been announced.

“It is clear that Angie’s insight, integrity, experience, leadership, and ability to build relationships across the College make her an excellent fit for the interim [chief student affairs officer] role and a critical partner in building a truly inclusive and supportive environment for Amherst students and a rich and meaningful community for all of us,” Elliott wrote.

The role of interim chief equity and inclusion officer will be filled by Sheila Jaswal — professor of chemistry, biochemistry and biophysics, and education studies — Elliott announced in an email on Feb. 2. Jaswal previously served as the faculty equity and inclusion officer.

Elliott lauded Agosto in his email announcing her departure. He specifically noted her adaptability in the face of the Covid pandemic, which hit less than a year into her tenure and required her to communicate frequent updates to the college’s Covid protocols to the student body.

“With Liz at the helm, Student Affairs supported our student body during one of the most challenging moments in our institutional history, and she and her team did so with com -

passion, wisdom, and vision,” Elliott wrote. “Her dedication and commitment during the pandemic was extraordinary, and we all owe her our profound gratitude for all she has done.”

In an email statement to The Student, Agosto explained the difficulty in becoming “the information conduit” to students about the rapidly shifting circumstances of Covid at the college.

“My proudest accomplishment is navigating these complicated circumstances with purpose, humility, humanity, and student-centeredness (even if students didn’t always perceive it that way),” she wrote.

In her time at Amherst, the moments she treasured most, Agosto added, were the face-toface conversations she had with students.

“Over the last three and a half years, I have had the opportunity to offer hugs, to offer a listening ear to students as they share their pain, to witness moments of reflection during an accountability conversation, to be asked difficult and direct questions, to engage in lively dialogue, and to laugh with pure joy,” Agosto said. “These are the unseen moments that I treasure and that hold a special place in my heart.”

Most of Agosto’s time in the near future will be spent in Ver-

mont, supporting her family through health challenges, but she wrote that in the long-term she hopes to “continue to work in education and support students in their growth, learning,

and development.”

“While my time at Amherst has not been what I expected it to be, and it is ending earlier than I had anticipated, I am very grateful for all that I have lear-

ned, the relationships I have built, and the students I have supported,” she added. “Thank you for welcoming me and for our journey together. It has been an honor.”

Students Say Leise Inspired Them To Achieve Goals

Continued from page 1

beyond the college — in her field, but also in the lives of her students.

“Her 2006 co-authored (with Kurt Bryan) article on the linear algebra behind Google is considered a landmark expository piece,” Epstein wrote.

Jack Liebersohn ’09, assistant professor in economics at the University of California, Irvine, said that Leise’s coverage of the topic was given at a time where Google was a newer application, it felt extremely relevant.

Learning about the math behind the website made him feel like he was “on the cutting edge” of mathematics, Liebersohn said.

Through taking linear algebra with applications with Leise, Liebersohn said that it felt like he was really learning, a change from the “contrived word problems” that other math classes employ.

“Part of the reason I took the class was because it was supposed to be easy,” Liebersohn said. “But it turned out that the reason it was easy was because she taught the challenging material so well … so

intuitively.”

Jin shared her gratitude for having been able to work with Leise, “and seen how her incredible mind works. It is a real sadness that she is no longer with us,” she said.

Jin added that working with Leise made her realize that she wanted to pursue a career in applied mathematics and biostatistics.

“I had no coding experience prior to college and I was daunted by it,” Jin said. “Being immersed in [coding] with her guidance showed me that with the right instructor, it is very accessible and possible.”

Liebersohn said he constantly thinks about the lessons he’s learned from Leise.

“I wouldn’t have been able to get a finance PhD if I hadn’t majored in math,” Liebersohn said. “I wouldn’t have majored in math if I hadn’t taken a class and been advised by [Leise].”

“I can’t overstate how much of an effect she had on me,” Liebersohn continued. “She was one of the kindest professors I knew and I took it for granted. Having become a professor myself now, with a young child, I realize how much

work it was for her, in addition to the research that gets you tenure … but she made it seem like it was what she was happiest to do in the world.”

Editor’s Note: Leise’s colleagues in the math department collectively declined to be interviewed for this article, expressing their feeling that they would be unable to do full justice to her memory by commenting at this moment. They also wished to respect Leise’s family’s privacy. The Student will follow up at a later date to more fully commemorate Leise’s legacy.

Agosto came to Amherst in 2019 as the dean of students.

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

Mead Art Museum Reopens After Steeple Repairs

Dylan Vrins ’26 Senior Staff Writer

On Tuesday, Jan. 31, the Mead Art Museum opened its doors to the general public for the first time in nearly three years, after closing in March 2020 at the onset of the Covid pandemic. The time spent shuttered allowed the museum to improve its accessibility, renovate its lobby, and add new educational opportunities for classes studying art.

The museum had been open to students and faculty last academic year, but it closed to all in March 2022, after a routine inspection revealed that the Stearns Steeple, which sits adjacent to the Mead, required repairs to ensure its structural integrity.

The delays meant that the Mead would reopen under its new director, Siddhartha V. Shah, who said he has been working to make the museum available to the public since his arrival at Amherst less than three months ago.

In his brief time at the Mead, Shah has already embarked on new initiatives, particularly to improve the museum’s accessibility. Shah explained that the museum staff were trained and certified by KultureCity, a non-profit organization that helps venues become more sensorily inclusive. “If you’re entering a space in the museum where there’s noise,” Shah explained, for instance, “then we [will in

the future] have noise-canceling headphones that people might want to put on if they’re sensitive to sound.”

“We also have things like weighted lap pads, So if someone wants to communicate and in the moment is not able to speak or just in general is not able to speak, they're able to communicate their needs.”

“[This] means that we're better prepared to welcome visitors with invisible disabilities,” Shah said. He added that the Mead is one of the only museums in the Amherst area to be certified in this way.

The physical space of the museum has also been renovated. Previously, a large wooden desk took up most of the space in the lobby, but it has since been replaced by a smaller desk and a small lounge area. This new lobby, Shah explained, felt less cold and much more welcoming to visitors.

Aside from physical changes, the reopening of the Mead is bringing back educational opportunities for classes studying art on campus. Over the pandemic period, classes were only able to visit the Mead’s study rooms, where pieces of art would be brought in by museum curators to simulate a mini-exhibition. Now, the Mead’s galleries are open to classes, according to Emily Potter-Ndiaye, the Dwight and Kirsten Poler and Andrew W. Mellon head of education and

curator of academic programs at the Mead. This is a first for the majority of students, who weren’t here prior to Covid.

Alongside the reopening of exhibitions to Amherst classes, The Mead is unveiling several new galleries in the near future. Its first exhibition of the year, “Architectural Ghosts,” curated by Karen Koehler, visiting professor of art history and chair of the Department of Art and the History of Art, opened on Jan. 31 and will remain so until June 25.

On Feb. 24, the Mead will open a new exhibition titled

“God Made My Face: A Collective Portrait of James Baldwin.”

The exhibition was organized by New Yorker Staff Writer and University of California, Berkeley, Professor Hilton Als, who will also be on campus as a presidential scholar for LitFest later this month.

Potter-Ndiaye said that the exhibition will present “different ways of approaching James Baldwin as a person and as an educator — and how his experiences with art and artists informed his politics.”

On March 7, during the sixth

annual Black Art Matters Festival, the Mead will feature student artwork. Due to the repairs needed on the Stearns Steeple, the student art exhibition from last year’s Black Art Matters Festival took place in the Powerhouse. This year, the festival will display student art from last year as well as this year in the Mead’s galleries.

“It’s going to be right next to the Baldwin show. So it’ll be really visible — everybody will see it,” said Potter-Ndiaye. The

Continued on page 5

Photo courtesy of The Mead Art Museum

A set of artworks featured in the exhibition "Architectural Ghosts," which is the Mead's first exhibit since reopening.

Damages to the Stearns Steeple forced the Mead to close shortly after reopening.

Photo courtesy of Erin Williams '26

Mead To Feature New Exhibitions After Reopening

Continued

Mead is still collecting student submissions for this event. The deadline for submissions was Monday, Feb. 6, but may still be extended depending on how many submissions are received.

To celebrate its reopening and new initiatives, the Mead will be hosting a Welcome Back Party and Opening Reception for the “Architectural Ghosts” exhibition on Wednesday, Feb. 8, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Shah expressed his excitement at being able to share the Mead with students on campus. “I really believe that the museum can be a space for students to slow down, to destress, activate their imaginations, and just really celebrate human creativity,” he

said. “I want the museum to be a place where students can really think critically about all of the images that are coming at us all the time.”

Potter-Ndiaye similarly emphasized the importance of students visiting the Mead.“It’s this nice window into a world that is both of Amherst College and beyond,” she said. “Students should know it’s a place to breathe and have fun.”

The Mead encourages students to get involved in any way they can, whether that be by submitting their own artwork or taking part in the planning of various upcoming events and festivals. The museum is open Tuesday through Sunday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and on Thursdays until 10 p.m.

Schwemm’s Transformed into Merchandise Store

Leo Kamin ’25 Managing News Editor

Students returned from winter break to find the Mammoth Market at Schwemm’s transformed. Long a favorite (and often the only) option for late-night dining, Schwemm’s is in the process of being converted into an official college apparel store, while the Science Center Cafe has expanded its hours and offerings to meet the late-night demand.

The late-night service is more limited than that offered by Schwemm’s last semester, closing at 10 p.m. instead of the typical 11 p.m. on school nights, and foregoing late-night service on Friday and Saturday nights entirely. The cafe’s menu has added a select few Schwemm’s “favorites” — chicken tenders, fries, mac-n-cheese bites, burgers, and shakes — which become available after 3 p.m., but the rest of the previous items, including the popular mozzarella sticks, will be unavailable.

The shake-up traces its origins to the closing of downtown Amherst staple AJ Hastings last

summer. The store had long served as the go-to place for college gear. The new merch store at Schwemm’s is intended to replace it, according to Joe Flueckiger, executive director of dining services and hospitality services.

“We can’t, as an institution, not have a brick-and-mortar [apparel] solution for guests, students, and alumni,” he said.

The college initially searched for another business in the area that could take over AJ Hastings’ role, but ultimately decided that the new store would have to be on campus. The small clothing section that was set up in Schwemm’s last semester “wasn’t satisfying the overall demand,” Flueckiger said, prompting the plan to replace food service in Schwemm’s with the new store and expand service at the Science Center. Though initially slated to take place during Thanksgiving break, the change was delayed after workers expressed concerns.

After a process that Flueckiger described as “engaging in a larger discussion with all of our campus partners and stake -

holders” and “checking all our boxes,” the changes went ahead while students were away on winter break. In addition to the permanent store at Schwemm’s,

the college has rolled out an online merch store and plans to open a “mobile retail trailer,” which will be available later this spring.

Continued on page 6

Photo courtesy of Erin Williams '26

Photo courtesy of Massachusetts Office Of Travel & Tourism/Flickr

The Mead's galleries, along with the study room, have reopened to the public.

The Science Center Cafe now offers late-night food options until 10 p.m. on weeknights.

Science Center Cafe Adds New Late-night Hours

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center of campus have prompted concerns and disappointment from some students and staff.

Yolyana Rodriguez, the afternoon supervisor of the Mammoth Market, said that she expected less foot traffic at the Science Center Cafe than she had seen at Schwemm’s: “I don't see people walking here from Hitchcock, Garmin, Drew.”

In a message to The Student, Zane Khiry ’25 lamented the new, more out-of-the-way location for late-night food. “I’m really upset that they decided to move it and replace it with a merch store, especially given the fact that we can all just buy merch online now,” he wrote.

Flueckiger attributed the change to the fact that the college is pressed for space at the moment, forcing difficult decisions. He also said that the impetus for the reduced weekend services is the popularity of the free — and, he said, more equitable — late night option at Val Wednesday through Friday nights.

Flueckiger said he wanted students to remember that “we’re constantly thinking about how we can do better.” He said that the hours at the Science Center, and the retail options available to students generally, are never set in stone.

“The students are voting with their AC dollars,” he said. “We want to meet the students where they are at.”

Complaints surrounding the change go beyond the accessibility of late-night snacks, though.

A student employee, who requested to remain anonymous, reported a reduction in the number of available working hours to them following the changes. Whereas the student had in past semesters relied on their shifts at Schwemm’s to support themself and send money home to their family, they have found fewer and shorter shifts available at the Science Center Cafe.

Flueckiger said in an inter-

view with The Student that the changes would not affect the number of workers on Dining Services’ payroll and that the number of hours available to those workers would return to their former levels once shifts at the apparel store at Schwemm’s became available.

Nevertheless, the student employee told The Student that the situation was stressful. “Before, I always knew that they would give me as many hours as I asked for, and now that's not a reality for me anymore,” they said. “There’s all this uncertainty in background, on top of a typical course load.”

More generally, the student reported that the fast change had created uncertainty for all of the employees — student and non-student alike — at Schwemm’s and the Science Center. Longtime employees have had to quickly adapt to new work schedules after having settled into stable routines for years, they said. They also said that some less experienced student workers, who learned the ropes at Schwemm’s last semester, have had to adapt to a new menu and kitchen at the Science Center Cafe with little preparation.

“Now we're also responsible for knowing an entire new arsenal of recipes,” they said.

Rodriguez struck a different tone. “The addition of the items from Schwemm’s has been a smooth transition,” she said. “The quality of the food is actually better than what we were producing over at Schwemms.”

She did acknowledge that the new location seemed to be getting less traffic through the first week of operations, but also said that it was hard to tell due to the cold weather and it being the start of the semester.

The Science Center Cae is now open Monday through Thursday from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Sunday from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. The hours for the merchandise store at Schwemm’s are yet to be determined.

The Science Center Cafe will not be open on Friday and Saturday nights.

Only a select portion of the old Schwemm's menu is on offer at the Science Center.

Photo courtesy of Leo Kamin '25

Photo courtesy of Erin Williams '26

AAS BC Shakes Up Budget Process Amid Fiscal Uncertainty

Sam Spratford ’24 Editor-in-Chief

In a deviation from typical procedure, the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) has yet to set club budgets due to ongoing uncertainty about the amount of money available for allocation. Beginning next week, the Budgetary Committee (BC) will be reviewing club budgets in order to set aside funds for events later in the semester that are integral to the campus community, according to AAS Treasurer Dania Hallak ’24.

With the situation still in flux, some student club leaders expressed concern about how to plan their club's activities due to confusion surrounding the BC’s funding decisions.

Budgets for Registered Student Organizations (RSO) are normally reviewed by the BC during the preceding term. Hallak attributed the postponement of the process to the budgetary crisis that began last semester, when the AAS reported a significant depletion in their funds.

While they continue working with the Office of Student Activities to sort out the numbers from last semester, the BC has implemented a provisional procedure through which they will review allocations for certain essential RSO functions, like league fees. This process will take place over a period of several weeks, beginning next Monday, Feb. 13.

Hallak says that, in addition to the Student Activities Fee, the AAS has historically dipped into its rainy day fund — money accumulated from past budget surpluses — to finance RSOs after exceeding its discretionary fund, the money allotted for clubs to request on a weekly basis. However, as The Student reported last semester, the rainy day fund has been significantly depleted since the onset of Covid, falling from about $200,000 to $70,000.

Hallak explained that the losses in the rainy day fund were not immediately known to her, citing undocumented historical overspending as the reason for

the discrepancy. “We allocated [throughout the pandemic] based on the assumption that we had all that money,” she said.

The reduction in the Student Activities Fee during Covid has also contributed to the crisis. The fee is still not back to pre-pandemic levels, despite significant inflation since then.

At the end of last semester, the exact amount in the account was still unresolved, and the BC voted unanimously to delay setting club budgets, Hallak said. Allocations for the spring semester would have normally been negotiated over a period of three weeks, culminating in a Senate vote during the AAS’ last meeting of the fall semester.

“We had no idea [what the figure] was at that point, and to this day, I do not have a good read on what the [value of that] account is,” Hallak said.

Amid this uncertainty, the BC is aiming to ensure that their limited resources are as impactful as possible, Hallak said. The committee is prioritizing "hallmark" events and “urgent” needs in reviewing next week’s club funding requests.

Hallmark events are long-standing annual events that contribute to defining a club’s identity, a commonly-cited example being the gatherings that religious affinity groups host during holidays. This priority is not new; since the onset of the budget crisis, BC has made other policies, like caps on food and travel expenses, more stringent in order to accommodate hallmark event costs.

“We have to fund them regardless of how much money we have,” said AAS Senator Zane Khiry ’25, a BC member, when asked whether the uncertainty around club budgets would affect hallmark events.

Hallak stated that the BC’s other priority — “urgent” funding needs — is a standard new to the upcoming budget review. It refers to anything that is timely or “integral to the functioning of the club.”

“We cannot pick and choose what we think is most urgent,” Hallak explained, “we’re just following policy.” She cited the date that payment is due as a relevant factor, as

well as the certainty of the cost. If a club sport has a league fee due in April, for instance, Hallak said, the BC would allocate funds in advance.

Hallak said that next week’s budget review, rather than being a blanket negotiation of each RSO’s total funds for the semester, will look more like an approval of certain line items based on their urgency. Hallak believes that this procedure will allow RSOs to continue operating smoothly while the AAS resolves the uncertainty surrounding its fiscal figures.

“Right now we are at a healthy point where we do think it’s possible to fund everything that’s urgent,” Hallak added, “And this is an accomplishment because last year, we were not so sure.”

Some club leaders, however, expressed confusion about the application of this new policy of urgency and the situation surrounding club budgets.

Sofia Tennent ’25, Amherst College Outing Club (ACOC) E-board member and Rock Climbing Club treasurer, was confused by the BC’s resistance to allocating just over $9,000 to the Climbing Club for memberships to the rock-climbing gym where they hold their practices. At the discretionary meeting, BC expressed that this number felt high under current budget constraints.

“It’s kind of the definition of arbitrary,” Tennent said, concerning BC’s decision to fund 13 fewer memberships than were initially requested, “and it’s not a policy that’s [written down].”

Hallak emphasized to The Student that the severe budget constraints called for extraordinary considerations beyond normal policy, like “which [requests] have a date on them, which ones have precedent, and which ones are integral to the club.”

Emily Byers ’25, treasurer of women’s club soccer, expressed similar sentiments about the ad hoc nature of the discretionary funding process, which she thinks has been exacerbated by the recent intensification of constraints.

“It’s always been a balance

between it being a very formalized process,” where BC simply applies prewritten policies, and something that depends on the BC’s discretion, Byers said.

The delay in budget allocations has caused a sense of anxiety and instability for many club leaders. Because RSOs would normally have their budgets by the end of the fall semester, some leaders reported that they have faced challenges funding events taking place right at the beginning of the spring semester, while others said that, over the past two months, the costs associated with their upcoming events have increased significantly.

Byers is also on the E-board for the Food Justice Alliance, and is planning the club’s annual “Share the Share” fundraising event, where community members gather at Book and Plow Farm for crafts, catering, and music to support the Pioneer Valley Workers Center.

“That’s a case where it would have been really nice to get a club budget to at least get some initial funding,” Byers said, “because we’re gonna have to pull from a lot of different places to make that happen.”

Byers reported having a much easier time obtaining funding for the club soccer league and coach’s fees, which easily met the urgent funding standard.

Mock Trial Co-captain James Minor ’23 struggled to get money for the preparatory and travel costs associated with a tournament during the weekend of Feb. 4 — the first weekend of the spring semester.

“We sent this budget [to our BC representative] on Jan. 8,” said Minor, “and we did email the AAS treasurer [Hallak] directly on Jan. 12.” Despite this, Mock Trial wasn’t able to secure funds until the first discretionary meeting on Jan. 30 — less than a week prior to the tournament.

“Things were a lot more expensive by the time we got around to it,” Minor added.

Tennent reported that the ACOC has had a similar experience when it came to planning their trips for the semester. To or-

ganize trips, the ACOC contracts with an outside company that acts as a liaison between them and the outdoor activities companies they use.

“We approached them to come up with a budget in November [2022] for the budgets we wanted to go on this spring,” Tennent explained. “and we were able to negotiate really good prices, especially if we put down payments by Dec. 15.”

Despite first contacting the BC about allocating this money on Nov. 24, Tennent said that the ACOC has yet to hear back from them or obtain the funds.

Hallak explained that some of the communication issues derive from the Office of Student Activities, which is responsible for determining which student groups are active and “in good standing” to receive budgets. This semester’s list of RSOs excluded many longstanding groups, like ACOC, and prevented them from receiving budget communications in a timely manner.

Associate Director of Student Activities Jelani Johnson was out of office and could not be reached for comment.

Khiry recognized that the confusion surrounding these delays, though the budget crisis is an extraordinary circumstance, is indicative of larger communication issues between the AAS and the student body.

“What I’m … concerned about is the student frustration with BC and how to assuage that so that people don’t misunderstand what’s going on,” Khiry said. He has confidence that the AAS’ new public relations committee, spearheaded over J-term by Claire Beougher ’26, will help counteract this confusion in the future.

Both Khiry and Hallak emphasized that a key priority of the BC is still pushing for an increase to the Student Activities Fee.

“Right now, we're doing things that we did pre-Covid at higher prices due to inflation,” Hallak said. “But that decision to raise the [fee] lands back in the hands of the administration.”

Mammoth Moments in Miniature: Dec. 6 to Feb. 7

The Editorial Board

College Announces New Chief Financial and Administrative Officer

On Wednesday, Feb. 1, the administration announced that it had chosen Michael Thomas as its new Chief Financial and Administrative Officer (CFAO). Thomas joins the college after a stint of nine years at Middlebury College, where, among other roles, he served as vice president of administration, chief risk officer, and assistant treasurer. In his new role as CFAO, Thomas will oversee the college’s finances and report directly to President Michael Elliott, who emphasized that Thomas will serve as “a critical strategic partner to me and to all of us at Amherst.” Thomas, who will replace interim CFAO Tom Dwyer, will officially join the college on March 27.

AAS Inaugurates New Vice President, Ankit Sayed

In addition to the typical happenings at the Association of Amherst Students’ (AAS) first meeting of the year, this semester’s inaugural meeting on Jan. 30 also brought with it an official change in leadership as Ankit Sayed ’24 assumed the position of Vice President. While Sayed’s election as vice president was contested due to a wide variety of technical issues and differing vote counts during the fall semester’s special election, following review by the Judiciary Council, Sayed was deemed the legitimate winner. Sayed will serve as AAS’ vice president for the spring semester.

Val Hosts Campus Art for All Inaugural Exhibition

On Feb. 6, Valentine Dining Hall inaugurated its first ever Campus Art for All Exhibition with a selection of hors d’oeuvres, remarks by Anthony Melting Tallow — a writer, poet, visual artist, and member of the Siksika Blackfoot First Nation of Alberta, Canada — and a performance by the student-run Slippers quartet. The exhibition features a wide variety of visual art created by both students and staff,

and is part of the college’s ongoing efforts to increase the presence of student art around campus.

College Launches New Online Merch Store

As an addition to the college’s current merchandise offerings in Schwemm’s Mammoth Market, which was initiated following the closure of former Amherst staple A.J. Hastings in the fall, the college has officially launched its own online merchandise store for all things Amherst, including t-shirts, jackets, backpacks, and more. Expansions have also been made to Schwemm’s in-person offerings, which will offer a selection of products that differs from the online store.

Professor Leah Schmalzbauer Named Faculty Athletic Representative

On Jan. 19, the administration announced that Karen and Brian Conway '80, P'18 Presidential Teaching Professor of American Studies and Sociology Leah Schmalzbauer had been appointed to the position of Faculty Athletic Representative. In her new role, Schmalzbauer will be tasked with “promot[ing] greater understanding among student-athletes, faculty, and coaches about the role of athletics in students’ education,” and will work to address the division between student-athletes and the broader student body. Schmalzbauer will assume the new position on Jul. 1 of this year.

Frost Library Hosts Opening Reception for Historical Exhibition

Frost Library will be holding a reception to celebrate the opening of a new exhibition in conjunction with the Ancestral Bridges Foundation on Thursday, Feb. 9. The exhibition, which will consist of curated historical photographs and artifacts, will focus on the experiences of members of the Black and Afro-Indigenous community in the town of Amherst in order to “paint a picture of pre-emancipation Amherst and beyond.” The exhibition will be open through the summer. Frost is hosting a

new exhibition in partnership with the Ancestral Bridges Foundation.

The college launched a new online merch store to supplement the Mammoth Market.

Photo courtesy of AmherstCollegeStore.com

Photo courtesy of MassLive

Features Meenakshi Jani Thoughts on Theses

Meenakshi Jani (she/her) is an environmental studies and history major writ-

a

colonial

in India

Philippines.

in Conservation: Foresters as State-Builders and Myth-Makers in Colonial India and the Phillipines," looks into the role of forest officers and forest department employees in the larger colonial project in these places.

Q: How does it relate to your lived experience?

Q: Do you find there to be an overlap between Environmental Studies and History?

A: It was [William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Environmental Studies Ted Melillo’s class] 'Environmental Issues of the Nineteenth Century' that really got me thinking about environmental history. I think what blew my mind about it is that we so often think about the environment and environmental issues as really contemporary. People are saying we need to save society from a climate crisis. And now, people are finally talking about environmental justice as a problem. And there’s this sense of urgency and … 'in the now' mentality around environmental stuff. And I think it’s really important to think about how it’s actually not just a 'current' kind of topic. It was really interesting for me to learn how we actually got to this point historically. Not just from a climate perspective, but also from an ideological perspective ... How did people historically think about the environment when the climate crisis was not on their radar? Because people have always been thinking about relationships between people and the environment, just in different ways and with different questions on their mind. For my thesis, I recently went to London to do archival research this past month. And while I was in the archive, I came across this source of British forestry officials talking about how important forests are for regulating so many other aspects

of the environment ... This was from the 19th century, so people have been thinking about these questions for a long time.

Q: What is your thesis about?

A: It’s looking at the role that the forester — or a person doing work for Colonial forestry departments — played, and what space they occupied in the colonial project of forest conservation, specifically in India and the Philippines in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ... But more specifically, I’m focusing on the forester as a figure because there’s a lot of scholarship that talks about how this discipline, of what some people have called Empire Forestry, developed. So essentially, what happened in India, and in the Philippines a little bit later under the U.S. as well as Spain was the [colonizing] empire tried to consolidate state authority over forests ... This was in response to concern about private interests, like logging excessively, and all of that. But it was also very antagonistic towards communities that used forest land and were dependent on forest resources. It was an early form of what you maybe could call environmentalism, but it wasn’t necessarily from a ‘save the trees’ perspective. It was a lot more of, ‘Let’s make sure that we are able to use these resources for Imperial interests for the longest period of time possible’ ... In the Philippines, the U.S. was also doing some similar things in terms of creating this forestry

bureau, consolidating forestry in the hands of the state. And what I’m really interested in is how it used people as part of that process. Who did it hire, both from the U.S. or from Britain, but then also from local communities to actually do this work of forest management or conservation? I argue that in both contexts, foresters occupied a liminal space, constantly renegotiating their place within academic institutions, colonial hierarchies, and government bureaucracies. Using India and the Philippines as case studies, I demonstrate how, like the discipline of empire forestry, colonial understandings of the forester as a state-builder and myth-maker developed transnationally ... I feel sometimes I have to give that explanation because I realized that the word ‘forester’ isn’t even one that people necessarily use or think about so I feel like I needed to give that context.

Q: What inspired you to pursue this topic?

A: I’ll reference 'Environmental Issues in the Nineteenth Century' again. In that course, I wrote a paper that was looking at taking scholarly books that we had read for the course about U.S. conservation policy, and seeing how I could apply that to British India in the 19th century ... So that was kind of the initial comparative lens that I started to take. And then, I studied abroad in Spain in the spring semester of my junior year and started thinking more about Spanish imperialism. That’s how the Philippines came into this question.

A: I have an interest in South Asia in general, just from other academic work that I’ve done. That was definitely part of my motive to write the thesis. And I’m Indian American so I have that connection heritage-wise. And actually, I don’t think this is what inspired the thesis topic, per se, but it has been interesting to think about, because my great-great-grandfather was a forester in India ... I was talking to my grandpa about it earlier. And we’ll see if the stories that he’s told me will make their way into my thesis ... So yeah, I do have some personal connections in different places. But I think also just, in terms of my own life, I’m really interested in doing environmental work after college.

Q: How has your thesis journey evolved?

A: My thesis is completely different than what I originally planned. So, I was studying abroad in Spain, which actually was a little weird being abroad while realizing I had to start thinking about my thesis. But at that point, I just started thinking about the Philippines because I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting to put this in conversation with Spanish colonialism?’ And I don’t think I actually gave a lot of thought to what it means to take a comparative history perspective in the beginning. And that’s definitely something I’m still learning through the process of writing the thesis. But I think I do generally have an interest in courses and topics that are transnational and span multiple contexts. That is an approach to history that does interest me. And you know, I started out with that. And then I ended up looking more at the U.S. because I was finding more sources about it and seeing some of that consolidation of colonial power over forestry happening more once

the U.S. took power. And that seemed a little more parallel to what was happening in British India, or what had happened a few decades before. Then over the course of the thesis, figuring out this thing about the role of the forester, that was not something I had thought about before. And over the course of time, after doing research in the archives, it changes everything. And every time you look at a new document, you’re like, ‘Wait a second, this changes my question.’ So I went from a lot of thinking about ideology, and gender, and lots of different issues, and then I eventually sort of came to a topic that I was like, ‘This is what I want to look at and I feel like I’m able to contribute something different if I focus in this way.’

Q: What conversations do you want your thesis to spark?

A: I think it comes down to the broader question that I mentioned before, of decolonizing conservation; such as the ideas about preserving land, specifically pristine land, and managing land… [for] my senior seminar in environmental studies, [my final paper] looked at contemporary forest management strategies in India and the Philippines today, and specifically how those are gendered. So looking at community-based forest management, where instead of just the state managing everything, letting local communities, who already are stewards of the forest land in many contexts, have authority over the land ... And I think that’s a good example of a contemporary manifestation of my thesis topic, which is that everything that’s happening now in these places is trying to decolonize the practice of forest management.

Read the full interview online at www.amherststudent.com

— Belem Oseguera '24E

Photo courtesy of Claire Beougher '26

ing

thesis about

forestry

and the

Her thesis, "Missionaries

Birding at Amherst: Crows, Coops, and Cameras

Fahim Zaman ’25 Staff Writer

When talking about birds, it’s best to start early — in this case, just five minutes before the 8:30 a.m. Arabic class I took in my first semester at Amherst. At around 8:25, I would stumble out into the warm James hallways with just enough time to run across the chilly First Year Quad to Johnson Chapel. During those quiet mornings, the sounds of my shoes trudging through dirt were often joined by a call that snapped me out of my morning reverie — the cries of crows.

They’re usually near the quad, Porter House, Alumni House, or Pratt Field, but as Sasha Heywood ’25, then my fellow Arabic classmate, noted, “they definitely [also] used to roost in Johnson Chapel; I would hear them from my room in South.”

We weren’t the only students taking an interest in campus fowl. According to the New York Times and Quartz, birding has seen a rise in popularity since the start

of Covid, and Amherst seems to be no exception: Many students are going on bird walks, birdwatching, photographing birds, engaging with them through biology labs, or simply talking about them. Some have even revitalized a club for it, aptly named Bird Club. To learn more about this spike in popularity, I spoke with three students who have been involved in various bird-related activities at Amherst. They told me about how they got into birdwatching, raising their own birds, and taking pictures of them (in places as distant as Serbia!)

Bird Club: A Nest for Bird Lovers at Amherst

If you went to the 2021-2022 club fair, you might’ve seen a table empty save for a sign that read “Bird Club.” No one sat behind it — there was no sign-up sheet, poster, nothing. But this year, if you passed by that same sign, you’d find Julius Tyson ’25 sitting with his laptop and a signup sheet, calling you to join.

Tyson is the current president of Bird Club, which came into being this year, but actually has existed by technicality all along — that is, on the Amherst Hub. The club had existed before but had died during Covid with the graduation of its old president, Sam Zhang ’21. Like many, Tyson passed by that empty sign last year and was “disappointed to discover that the club was inactive on the Hub. I got in touch with Student Activities right before the fall semester. I was pretty easily able to add myself as president of the club, maintaining the same site on the Hub and only slightly editing the constitution,” as he described.

After just one year, the club now stands at around 100 members. Since then, it has hosted a variety of bird-related events, including bird walks led by the club’s vice president, Connor Farlquhar ’26.

Farlquhar has been a birdwatcher for over a decade, and you can tell — he’s almost always

wearing something bird-related. He’s seen almost 800 different species of birds, including “a tropical bird nesting site in Tobago, a tern and puffin nesting colony in Maine, and a salt lick with seven species of parrots in the Amazon.” All of these experiences sprouted from one field guide he received as a gift at around seven. Farlquhar said he had “always loved reading about animals, and so [he] ended up memorizing the species after about a year.”

While the field guide was a “form of escape,” Farlquhar has since found his favorite thing about birdwatching to be “the time spent outside with friends. Getting together, and helping each other see new birds is fun and builds relationships.”

Many other members of Bird Club have similar motivations. Ahanu Youngblood ’25, for one, said that “[t]he Bird Club group chat is super friendly and people are always posting pictures of cool birds they see around campus.” And as Farlquhar noted, there are “members of the club who have birdwatched for many years” and there are also some, “who have never seriously gone out in the field.” But everyone who joined has a shared passion — well, birds!

Flying Out Of The Nest (or Birding Outside of the Club)

There are also many ways to engage with birds outside of birdwatching with the Bird Club. Several members of the club take pictures of birds for research they are working on for professors. Other students — myself included — have done falconry on their own, at New England Falconry.

At his family’s house here in Amherst, Youngblood even raises his own pigeons; he has “a small coop that fits around 15 pigeons with nesting boxes, food troughs, and water bottles that they can drink out of.” Youngblood got into the hobby from joining a club called Northwest Junior Flyers. Part of his interest in raising pigeons was how “attached” he

felt to birds. “I love their color patterns and love watching how they interact with each other and seeing each bird’s mannerisms,” he gushed.

Bird photographers, like Aleksandar Ristivojevic ’23, are also welcomed by the club. He described to me how he “bought a telephoto lens for my phone and started taking photos of birds I see in the morning around Greenway dorms.” Since then, he has photographed birds including mockingbirds, starlings, American robins, and mourning doves — however, his favorite birds are crows. Ristivojevic recently posted a photo of one on the Bird

Club group chat. “It was around two or three feet away from me, but sometimes they would get even closer,” he said.

Ristivojevic doesn’t just photograph crows, he also feeds them. He told me that when he places “peanuts on the top of [a] bench, I’ve seen several crows move about one foot away before jumping to get the peanuts after I step back.” Back home in Serbia, he lives “next to a relatively big park, and now every time I’m back home for the break, in the mornings I go to the park and throw peanuts.” In Ristivojevic’s experience, it usually take less than a minute for a dozen crows to show up.

As seen through these three experiences, birding can take a variety of forms for Amherst students. Whether you’re sitting at the bench overlooking Memo-

A Hooded Crow side by side with an American crow.

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard '26

Getting together, and helping each other see new birds is fun and builds relationships.

-Connor Farlquhar

Quick Questions: How Much Does Dorm Damage Cost?

what you’re wondering about, and we might look into it for you!

Caelen McQuilkin ’24E Managing Features Editor

Last December, The Student reported on the impact of repeated instances of dorm damage on custodial staff and the facilities department. After the article was published, we obtained additional information on the total monetary cost of these damages.

Over the course of the Fall 2022 semester, where the first reported damage was on Aug. 18, 2022, and the last on Dec. 7, 2022, damage costs that exceeded the already-allocated repair budget in dorms across the entire campus totaled $21,273.

This number is likely an underestimate, according to the Facilities Service Center (FSC), where dorm damage and messes get reported and then lined up for repairs. The center said they often view cost documentation as an afterthought to their priority to fix and clean the damage, so some costs never get

written down. In addition, not all excess costs get reported in the first place — many times, staff clean and fix damage without reporting it, the center noted.

Most of the costs for the supplies and time needed to fix dorm damage — such as cleaning supplies, drywall, or paint — come from the facilities budget, and the center does not record them. However, when an instance of dorm damage is severe enough that the FSC budget cannot cover it or it requires overtime work for a custodian, the center tracks the additional cost in a running spreadsheet, which The Student used to calculate the various totals here.

The dorm that accrued the most damage cost over the Fall 2022 semester was Plimpton Dormitory, where the FSC recorded four total instances of damage that required extra cost. That cost totaled $5,834, the bulk of which was due to the Nov. 12 incident, where repairs

cost $5,600.

Hitchcock and Morris Pratt Dormitories amassed the next highest cost amounts during Fall 2022, through a number

of instances occurring over the semester.

In Hitchcock, there were 14 recorded instances of damage that required extra costs to fix.

These costs totaled $3,050. In Morris Pratt, there were 28 recorded instances of damage requiring extra costs to fix, totaling $3,037.

For All Lovers of Birds, From Amherst to Serbia

Continued from page 10

rial Hill or in the snow in Serbia, there will always be a crow, whether it’s the American crow or the Hooded crow. Birding is a universal activity because regardless of where students are, or how they spend time with birds, there is one thing that’s certain: Birds will always be there to keep you company, even when you feel alone.

the series Quick Questions, The Student answers your short campus queries. Email astudent@amherst.edu with

Graphic courtesy of Nina Aagaard '26

There is one thing that's certain: Birds will always be there to keep you company, even when you feel alone.

Photo courtesy of Aleksandar Ristivojevic '23

Photo courtesy of Aleksandar Ristivojevic '23

An American Robin, shot by a Bird Club member.

Dorm damage repair costs that exceeded the allocated facilites budget.

Another American Robin, pictured in Amherst.

The AAS Is Changing for the Better — Will Students?

To say that the topic of the Association of Amherst Students (AAS) Senate was contentious among students last semester would be something of an understatement. Between rising discontent among students over budgeting issues, a controversial vice presidential election, and a sensationalized impeachment trial, the rift between Amherst students and their government has significantly widened. As we transition into a new semester, the Editorial Board hopes that this year will serve as a fresh start for a stronger, more trusting relationship between students and the AAS.

In order for this to work, however, both nonAAS students and the AAS have to put effort into mending this stressed relationship. The entire Amherst community, not either party alone, is responsible for the discord.

Student engagement with the AAS beyond seeking funding from the Budgetary Committee (BC) is practically nonexistent. Just look at our voter turnout for elections (maybe a quarter of the student body, on a good year), or the number of people who show up to public comments during meetings (usually zero). There’s a reason why many Senate races are uncontested — most students have little to no interaction with, or interest in, our student government. The impeachment trial was likely the most engaged the student body has been with the AAS in recorded memory.

We complain and complain about how ineffective the AAS is as an institution, but how is the Senate supposed to represent the student body if the student body doesn’t tell them what it wants?

At the same time, the AAS certainly has its own share of the blame for the state of relations between itself and the rest of the student body. Many students feel that the AAS doesn’t have enough transparency or accountability regarding its work. In the past, senators concocted expensive Senate projects, presumably for the good of the Amherst community, yet rarely consulted with students about what these projects were actually trying to accomplish.

The BC, the most community-facing AAS committee, is perhaps the most frequent subject of student ire. Some students object to a perceived lack of clarity and transparency with regard to funding decisions, and disappointment with the ongoing budget crisis.

The missing ingredient for engagement is a collective lack of understanding on students’ part of what the AAS does and what they have power to do. Without feedback, students can't hold the AAS

Opinion

THE AMHERST STUDENT

EXECUTIVE BOARD

accountable, causing it to function more as a club than a representative body. At the same time, the lack of clear and consistent communication between the AAS and students leaves it ambiguous what students should be expecting from the body.

To their credit, the AAS has already begun making necessary changes that will change this relationship for the better, such as its newest Committee on Public Relations, which aims to increase engagement with the student body and give more publicity to senate projects. This committee would do well to enact several studentfacing policies all at once, such as a question box where students can submit comments and concerns, as well as polls to gauge what on-campus issues students are most concerned about. Now, it’s time for us students to do our parts and actually be involved in the democratic process. We need to remember that AAS Senators don’t just represent us, but are also students, just like us: the same people we go to class with, eat at Val with, and see around campus.

Undeniably, there are many more complexities in the relationship between the Senate and the student body. The intensification of budget constraints, the administration’s poor communication with the AAS, the increasing discontent with the AAS’s constitution (time for a constitutional convention, maybe?): All of these factors have added their own challenges to the situation.

Though we can’t understand the specific challenges that the AAS faces, The Student, perhaps more than any other organization on campus, understands firsthand the challenge of representing the student body, and the potential pitfalls of being a separate organization, isolated from the rest of campus. Our critique of the sensationalization of the trial is particularly ironic, considering how our coverage of the event contributed to it — our article about the impeachment trial was among our most-clicked articles last semester.

Despite the drama of the night, the impeachment trial had an unexpected positive outcome: It showed the capacity of the AAS to be organized and carry out proceedings, of senators to be passionate about their love for Amherst and the AAS, and for students to be engaged. It is this passion and engagement from non-AAS students, AAS representatives, and other community members that will make Amherst a better place for all of us.

Unsigned editorials represent the views of the majority of the Editorial Board — (assenting: 12; dissenting: 0; abstaining: 1).

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The opinion pages of The Student are intended as an open forum for the Amherst community. We welcome responses 50-800 words in length to any of our recent articles and aim to publish a diversity of views and voices. If you would like to submit a response for consideration, it must be exclusive to The Student and cannot have been published elsewhere. The Student will print letters if they are submitted to the paper’s email account (astudent@ amherst.edu) or the article response form that can be found on The Student’s website, by 8 p.m. on Saturday, after which they will not be accepted for the week’s issue. Letters must bear the names of all contributors and an email address where the author or authors may be reached. Letters may be edited for clarity and Student style. The editors reserve the right to withhold any letter because of considerations of space or content.

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Where Does Your Amherst Sweatshirt Come From?

Nora Lowe ’26 Contributing Writer

While Amherst College students aren’t known for boisterous displays of school spirit, they do love to sport the Amherst logo. But where, specifically, do our branded clothing items come from, and are expressions of school spirit really contingent upon possessing material things? To explore these questions, in this article, I take a deep dive into the sourcing of Amherst merchandise.

Note: This project was inspired by “ENST / SOCI 226,” as well as a listing in the Office of Sustainability’s new Sustainability Projects Database.

Part 1: A Trip to Amherst’s Mammoth Market

Amherst’s A.J. Hastings store shut its doors recently after 108 years of business, and leftover merchandise was transferred to the Keefe Center’s Mammoth Market. I began my investigation there, by peeking

at the labels of their stock. As expected, most were manufactured abroad in countries in the “Global South” like Honduras, Indonesia, and El Salvador. In addition to being sourced from overseas (i.e., expending exorbitant amounts of fuel), some of these products came from factories with documented human rights violations. The Gildan sweatshirt pictured below looks innocent enough, but human rights abuses have been recorded as recently as 2017 in Honduras’ Gildan factories. However, A.J. Hastings is no longer supplying Amherst’s branded clothing. So what’s next for Amherst’s branded merch?

Part 2: Partnership with Follett

According to Amherst’s website, the college is finalizing a deal with a company called Follett, which has culminated in a recently launched online marketplace.

Follett is an Illinois-based corporation that subsidizes vendors in order to supply products to

institutions including colleges and universities. Their clothing-specific vendor is listed as Alta Gracia, a factory in the Dominican Republic.

My research into Alta Gracia originally yielded very promising results. It has been widely praised as a breakthrough in ethical garment manufacturing, boasting pay three times the country’s minimum wage and a lax work environment. The Huffington Post and PBS News Hour hailed it as proof that clothing producers can fairly compensate their workers and still be competitive in a global market. But when the pandemic hit, demand for college merchandise dropped, and with it, so did Alta Gracia’s employee wages. The company went out of business altogether in 2021. However, at the time of this article’s composition, the Follett website still listed Alta Gracia as their clothing vendor. This begs the question: How can a factory that shut its doors nearly two years ago supply Follett, and in turn, Amherst, with clothing?

Part 3: Internal Inquiries

The college’s director of sustainability, Weston Dripps, kindly looped me in with Joe Flueckiger, director of dining services. Flueckiger, in turn, posed my questions to Ralph Johnson, director of procurement and

shared services. Johnson told me, “We were careful to research vendors and to partner with a supplier who is transparent and who does have programs rooted in corporate social responsibility (CSR) and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG).” He shared that Allmade, Bella & Canvas, and Gildan are Follett’s primary vendors now, and he passed along the request for Follett to update their website accordingly.

Part 4: The Myth of Green Consumerism

While partnering with a socially and environmentally conscious vendor is a plus, green consumerism (or environmentally-conscious consumption) is not a magical antidote for environmental and social crises. It doesn’t truly get at the root of the problem, because until robust labor laws and enforcement are the norms, sweatshops will continue to dominate the marketplace unchecked. Should the ebb and flow of the market dictate who can live with dignity, and should Alta Gracia be written in history as a radical experiment — when the idea of treating workers with respect isn’t revolutionary at all? In the end, because green consumerism is still consumerism, it amounts to fighting fire with fire, markets with markets. The solution

is therefore not just to buy green things, but to buy less things.

Part 5: Call to Action

Amherst College should adopt a set of fair-trade and sustainability criteria for vendors from which they solicit products, taking into account factors such as how far the factory is from the market, as well as how the laborers are treated along the commodity chain. A good jumping-off point might be the sustainable procurement policy brainstormed by this year’s senior seminar, ENST-495. According to the Dec. 5 Office of Sustainability Newsletter, “The Environmental Studies Senior Seminar ENST-495 this fall took on a series of campus sustainability initiatives as part of the class. Projects included … a sustainable procurement policy.”

Dripps told me that while the “policy has not been formally written or adopted yet,” “they are working on developing recommendations for what such a policy could include.”

Susannah Auderset, a student who took ENST-495 and worked on this project, said over email that they were “focused on a general procurement policy, while looking specifically at cleaning supplies.” Finalizing and expanding upon this body of work, as well as adopting it as an institution, would be a step in the right direction.

An Amherst College Gildan sweatshirt, made in Honduras, hangs in Keefe Campus Center’s Mammoth Market.

A screenshot of Amherst’s website detailing plans for distributing merch in the absence of A.J. Hastings, and discussing its new partnership with Follett for shopping online.

Photo courtesy of Amherst College

Photo courtesy of Nora Lowe ’

How the Market Perpetuates Mental Health Crises

Gabe Proia ’25 Contributing Writer

When I went through my first episode of anxiety, all I could think about was fixing myself. I was obsessed with the idea that something was wrong with me, and it was not until much later that I realized this feeling was what was keeping me stuck. Many people suffering from mental health crises share this problem of self-doubt and self-criticism, through which detrimental states of mind sustain themselves. But what is the root of such personal dissatisfaction? How does our discourse and narrative surrounding mental health contribute to this self-destructive frame of mind?

The stigma surrounding mental health crises is slowly fading. These days, mental health disorders are more often classified as biological or chemical conditions as opposed to personal failings. This shift represents society moving away from the idea that mental illness should be overcome through force of will and encourages attending to emotional problems instead of repressing them. Certainly our changing societal conceptions around mental health represents progress in some form, but the emerging narrative is not without its shortcomings.

Our new approach suggests that mental health crises are caused by an imbalance in brain chemistry and that they are in a sense incidental, implying that they are not caused by the sufferer’s actions. This narrative is designed in part to prevent people from blaming themselves for their mental health issues, but it nevertheless still frames a mental health crisis as a problem to be fixed. Approaching most emotional issues as nothing but impediments to our lives still leads to the self-criticism that is damaging and counter to a sense of well-being. To evaluate whether there is a better way to conceive of mental health problems that avoids this, let’s first take a look at how mental health crises work.

I can only speak to my experience with anxiety, but as I understand

it, there are basic similarities between all anxious episodes, and there is considerable overlap with depression as well. The nature of an episode of anxiety or depression as I see it is the inability to control our emotions and recurring thought patterns. Someone who has not gone through a mental health crisis may wonder how thoughts and feelings could ever become uncontrollable, and the answer, quite simply, is habit. Thought loops don’t begin as debilitating, but if we circle within a particular train of thought, we cannot easily remember any other way to think after enough time has passed. At this point, it can become extremely hard to break the cycle of thoughts and feelings that feed on each other, and intensive therapy and medication is needed to retrain our brains.

The reason we get trapped in these cycles is fear. Fear acts as a trigger — when it arises, we spiral into unwanted thought loops as an automatic and misguided attempt

to alleviate it. Clearly fear can come from any number of different places, but an almost universal source of fear is the notion that we are somehow not good enough — a thought intimately tied to societal expectations. This means the ethics of a society can have a direct impact on perpetuating mental health crises, and in the case of our society, the foremost social expectation is continual productivity in the market.

In America, most people only take their mental and emotional health seriously when it begins interfering with what is considered to be “valued work,” and our notion of value is conceived rather narrowly. “Hustle culture” defines grinding and economic success as paramount, and as such, the most productive activities are generally considered to be those that have a direct or indirect impact on our economic output. But this calls into question activities like exercising or socializing, which are considered

productive even though they aren’t economically valuable at first glance. In general, activities considered to be “healthy,” like exercise, are seen as more productive than unhealthy ones, like watching TV. Regardless of the increasing weight put on “self-care,” it is still undoubtedly seen as secondary to one’s work and contribution to the economy. This should not come as a surprise, but what is perhaps surprising is why healthy activities are seen as productive at all, although admittedly less so than work. In following market logic, we see that healthy activities are considered productive not because of any intrinsic value placed on health, but only because they ensure our continued ability to work. This has huge implications for our mental health.

In the event of a mental health crisis, we become essentially unable to focus on work. The common wisdom is that in order to feel better, it’s important to fill the void

with other productive activities, such as socializing and exercising. These activities considerably improve peoples’ mood and outlook, with qualitative as well as quantitative evidence showing measured increases in serotonin and dopamine, neurotransmitters closely associated with mental well-being. While diet, exercise, sleep, and socializing undeniably help with mental health, they are not a silver bullet. Even with these strategies, many still feel overwhelmingly anxious and depressed, due in part, as previously discussed, to fear-induced cycles of self-critical thought. In fact, one reason why diet, exercise, and socializing are recommended is because they are known to improve self-image.

But very rarely does anyone ask why these activities make us feel good about ourselves. I would argue that in our society, it is not

Continued on page 15

Photo courtesy of Yasmin Hamilton ’24

The Center for Counseling and Mental Health Services provides one on-campus resource for students dealing with mental health crises. Gabe Proia ’25 discusses the benefits and drawbacks of such ’solutions.‘

The Market Logic of Mental Health

Continued from page 14

so much the intrinsic qualities of these activities that leads to self-confidence, but instead their connection to our ingrained market-based ethic. As I have shown, “healthy” activities are considered productive because they aid one’s ability to work, which must come first according to our society’s values. Because we are implanted with the idea that we are only valuable if we are working, it doesn’t make sense for doctors to ask people suffering from emotional problems to put health first and work second.

So, if pursuing healthy activities won’t help mental health, then what will? The answer is, increasingly, medication. Mental healthcare has become enfolded into the umbrella of Western medicine and is increasingly being addressed with diagnoses and medication, just like other health problems. This comes with some advantages, including a growing availability of treatment and a forthcoming social acceptance of it.

But framing emotional problems

medically also comes with its own generally close-minded attitude and an unwillingness to acknowledge alternative treatments, such as talk therapy or other forms of holistic healing. Psychiatry, far from a holistic practice, has instead become cold and calculated; it’s an analytical science that identifies symptoms, classifies people into boxes, and prescribes medication designed to address those symptoms instead of trying to solve problems at their source. Psychological problems often have their root in a traumatic experience, unresolved fear, or a misunderstanding of one’s own feelings, and these issues cannot be resolved simply by addressing the anxiety or depression they may cause. In fact, even though the administration of psychiatric drugs has increased significantly over the last twenty years, the prevalence of mental health disorders has not.

As opposed to psychiatry, which involves scarcely more than taking a tiny pill each morning, talk therapy oftentimes requires intensely painful and prolonged emotional work. Therefore, when people weigh their options, committing

to therapy understandably seems like an onerous prospect because of its high costs — many who want therapy are unable to afford it, and even for those who can, it represents a huge investment of time and attention.

This brings us back to the idea that in our society, productivity and mental well-being are at odds. Although therapy is designed to help us find the root of our problems and ultimately become happier and more fulfilled, it’s hard to be working a job when you must at the same time be doing the exhausting emotional labor that therapy entails. As a result, the system does not make room for it. In the mainstream, emotional growth is not a valued economic activity, and it is therefore highly preferable for people to use medication to curb emotional issues or to simply do nothing at all.

I am not advocating for the dismantling of the structures we have built to help people who are suffering from mental health crises. Psychiatry has its shortcomings, but its straightforward approach can nevertheless be a source of

great comfort for people. For me, it was an immense relief to know that a licensed professional was addressing my issue using clinically proven methods, and that my condition was essentially guaranteed to improve. Up until I had sought psychiatric treatment, I was relying wholly on myself to fix what I had identified as an emergent fatal flaw, and psychiatry took some of the responsibility of “repairing” myself out of my hands. Since being on medication I’ve achieved more control over my mind, and as a result talk therapy has become an effective tool for making more holistic emotional progress. For this reason, psychiatry should be seen as just one of many useful tools in combating mental illness, as opposed to both the start and end of treatment.

However, it is evident that in order to truly improve our collective mental health, expectations about how to be a member of society must change. This goes deeper than just eliminating the stigma around mental health crises or medication. Even if people are becoming okay with the idea of being in a mental

health crisis (due in part to the shift in narrative), they are still not okay with the consequences of it — the loss of conventional productivity. We must ease the expectation of universal and sustained economic productivity that drives people to hate themselves en masse. We need to change the way we define value. People must be made to feel okay with taking time for themselves and using time as they wish.

This means dismantling the idea of work as the end-all be-all of life. It may be a tired sentiment, but we should be working to live, not living to work.

In my own case, the pressure I put on myself to meet expectations was what fueled my mental health crisis. The event that initiated my anxious episode eventually became irrelevant, as the anxiety became entirely self-perpetuating — I was afraid of the fear itself, and stuck on the idea that the fear would keep me from ever being valuable again. It is far too easy for people to feel like they are broken in this world. The truth is that there is no way for a person to be broken — there is no wrong way for a person to be.

by Alice Burg

Amusements

Two of Everything | Feb. 8, 2023

ACROSS

1 "Beloved" author Morrison

5 Outlaw

8 Anakin and Luke's mentor

14 Thick Japanese noodle

Olympics host,

4 Silly

5 Dude

6 Cause of inflation?

7 Ark builder

8 "The Phantom of the ___"

9 Parting words*

10 A solid ending?

11 Resident at the base of Mount Crumpit, in a popular Dr. Suess book

12 "___ B? You choose."

13 Opposite of SSW 18 Ravel composition 22 Gold or silver, but

Alexandra Olson '25 Contributing Constructor

Arts&Living College Community Enjoys Art (and

Alex Brandfonbrener ’23 Managing Arts & Living Editor

On Monday, Feb. 6, Amherst students, faculty and staff gathered in the Weiller Wing of Valentine Dining Hall for the “Campus Art for All Inaugural Exhibition.” The event featured 26 works of art from Amherst students and staff, reflecting a wide range of mediums, themes and artistic inspirations.

One of the main forces behind the event was Anna Piergentili, Manager of Dining Hall Operations at Valentine Hall. I spoke with her to learn the story of how the event came to fruition.

“During Covid, checking out the dining hall and really looking at the walls, [I thought that] they [looked] really bare. And I thought that it was an opportunity to get some artwork up,” Piergentili reflected. Last spring, she teamed up with Nathalie Tacke, office assistant for dining services, and they began to look for student art to hang on the walls. But they didn’t have enough time before the semester ended and struggled to get a footing. “We put out an advertisement last spring, and we didn’t get any submissions — one or two, actually,” Tacke lamented.

So she went to Fayerweather Hall, and working with Studio and Gallery Technician Seth Koen, they were able to recover student artwork remaining in Fayerweather and hang it in Valentine Hall during the summer.

But they soon had a big problem. “We didn’t know who [the artists] were, because they were abandoned works,” Tacke admitted. “Some of them had their names on the back, but we didn’t know if they wanted to be associated with that piece ... So we made the decision to take it [all] down and start from scratch.”

Gabby Avena ’25 was the first student to bring this concern to Piergentili and Tacke, and quickly they began to work together. Avena helped kickstart the planning

process for the current exhibition, connecting Piergentili and Tacke with Dr. Miloslava Hruba, Study Room Manager and European Print Specialist at the Mead Art Museum. Together, they formed the Campus Art for All (CAFA) committee with other students and staff members and received support and funding from the Arts at Amherst Initiative. The CAFA committee members hope that this event is the first of many, and that they can continue to feature student art on the walls of Valentine Hall.

At the exhibition, after attendees enjoyed snacks provided by Dining Services, the event opened with remarks from Hruba. She noted that the purpose of the event was to embrace nontraditional exhibition spaces, in order “[to connect] communities through the transformative power of art.”

She was followed by a guest speaker, local artist Anthony Melting Tallow. Melting Tallow comes from the Siksika Blackfoot nation in Canada, whose heritage motivates much of his art. “If you don’t see your story out there,” he said, “then the whole world is open for you to do that.” His art reflects on intergenerational trauma from the Canadian residential school system, a program that separated thousands of Indigenous children from their families. For him, art is not only a mode of expression but also a means to heal. In his words, “Art saved me. ... Keep those creative fires burning [because] they saved me.”

Melting Tallow has an upcoming exhibition at the 50 Arrow Gallery in Northampton, featuring meme-inspired art with subversive yet humorous messages. He also said that he hopes to become more closely involved with the Amherst College community in coming months.

The reception concluded with jazz from a student band, The Slipper’s Quartet.

I was pleased to have a chance

to speak to many of the artists and hear about their inspirations. One of the most striking pieces in the exhibition was Rachel Lin ’25’s evocative painting, titled “Labeled.” The piece features a girl’s stern face with the words “My race is not a virus” written across her nose.

Lin reflected, “I created this piece in the beginning of the Covid outbreak when the alarming rise of anti-Asian hate crimes brought an immense sense of discomfort and fear within the Asian community and beyond.” Lin sees her art as a way to join “the collective effort to advocate for justice for the AAPI community.” I was glad to hear that Lin’s painting had been dis-

Food) for All

played for a year in the tunnel between the U.S. Capitol and House Office Buildings in Washington, D.C.

Another impactful piece was Ayomide Eniola ’24’s painting, titled “Portal to Dream Worlds.” A figure stands at the threshold of the unconscious, witnessing neurons as big as trees. The painting played a key role in a theater performance last semester, “In Worlds, As If,” a collaborative senior honors project by Hee Won Youn ’23, Nick Govus ’23E, and Julian Brown ’23. Eniola actually painted the piece onstage during the performance. She felt that the piece was aptly inspired by the themes of “In Worlds, As If”: “[The] show explored the relation-

ships between dreams and memory, the in-betweens of asleep and awake, and the relationship between neurons in your brain that makes it all happen. I processed the show’s themes by painting this homage to the dreamscape, a hazy soul stepping into their subconscious mind.”

Not all of the artists were students, though. The exhibition featured an untitled photograph from Senior Police Officer Jessica Kirby. The image portrays a tree saturated with ethereal and otherworldly colors. Kirby told me that it was luck that allowed her to take the photo.

Continued on page 18

Rachel Lin ’25: “Labeled.” Watercolor mixed media.

Photo courtesy of Gabby Avena '25

New Student Art Exhibition Proves Val-uable

Continued from page 17

“I had been walking around the Dakin property, near Humphries House, when I was suddenly awestruck by the sun peeking through the fog and how it illuminated this majestic oak tree. I knew I needed to swiftly capture the moment. I often carry my camera with me and I was thankful to have it that morning.”

The exhibition also showcased art from students in STEM classes who used data to make their art. Fiona Anstey ’24, Tina Zhang ’24 and

Caroline Wu ’26 used topographic data collected from the formation process of drumlins, landforms found in areas where glaciers once flowed, to make their piece “Drumlins: Glacial Formations and Fourier Transformations.” The three-plus minute long computer-generated video played in a slideshow on the TV in Weiller Wing, which cycled through student art during the event. Another student who used her passion for science to make art was Ana Varona Ortiz ’24. She originally captured her image, titled “Enter-

ing the Mouse-croscopic World,” to submit for a friendly competition in her Quantitative Image Analysis class. She admitted to me that she felt driven to try to win. “I wanted to pick a sample that would be both fun to image and also [had] a final wow factor. I remembered we had a slide of a mouse embryo that I thought looked really cool and thought it would be the perfect sample to image.” She took the photo using the new integrated Zeiss 980 microscope that the school acquired after Professors of Biology Sally Kim and

Marc Edwards received a Major Research Instrumentation Grant from the National Science Foundation.

While I was at the exhibition, snacking on grapes and arancini and admiring the art on the walls, I was struck by how many people came together to create the event: students,

staff and faculty from a wide variety of academic departments. Even though it can be easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle of assignments, the “Campus Art for All Inaugural Exhibition” was a reminder to simply slow down and appreciate some art.

Jessica Kirby: “Untitled.” Photograph.

Ana Varona Ortiz ’24: “Entering the Mouse-croscopic World.” Photograph.

Ayomide Eniola ’24: “Portal to Dream Worlds.” Gouache on canvas.

Photo courtesy of Gabby Avena '25

Photo courtesy of Gabby Avena '25

Photo courtesy of Gabby Avena '25

cott on the country in response to apartheid — haunted “Graceland” and Simon for years after the fact: Activists accused him of weakening the intended international solidarity against racism by offering his patronage and not calling for action within his lyrics, thus tacitly supporting the nation’s regime. It was not enough to just have hope, Simon’s opponents argued; if he would not actively be part of the solution, he was part of the problem.

TIME WARPED RECORDS

Alden Parker ’26 Columnist

The year was 1984, and Paul Simon’s fifteen minutes of fame were seemingly over: His artistic relationship with Art Garfunkel had fallen apart once again, his marriage to Carrie Fisher unspectacularly ended after less than a year, and his latest album had become his lowest-charting ever. Though Simon continued to get attention on the “nostalgia circuit,” nobody was looking for anything new from the folk singer, whose glory days were now almost two decades behind him.

Fortunately, Simon would later reflect that not having anything expected of you allows you to take risks — which meant nobody batted an eye when, inspired by a bootleg tape of South African mbaqanga street music, he flew to Johannesburg to spend two weeks in jam sessions with local musicians, then flew them to New York three months later to refine that initial work. The result, released in 1986, was “Graceland,” Simon’s best-known album without Garfunkel, and a work of art that remains dogged by the bigger-picture concepts surrounding its creation.

In this present moment, with genre and stylistic fusion being more common than ever in popular music, it can be a little hard to appreciate the novelty “Graceland”’s contemporary audience saw in its focused exploration of a foreign

soundscape. Nonetheless, the combination of the instrumentation and rhythms of the South African musicians (including co-arranger/guitarist Ray Phiri and choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo) with Simon’s lyrics and additional arrangements creates a totally distinct sound that, even now, seems both radically new and somewhat familiar. New York brass bands intersect with Johannesburg’s rural-tinged jazz bass and pennywhistles on “You Can Call Me Al,” Simon contrasts a South African folk song about how “the women take care of themselves” with a story of back-and-forth flirting at a high-society party on “I Know

What I Know,” and Ladysmith Black Mambazo evokes the longing of an American spiritual through the traditional a cappella arrangements of “Homeless,” illustrating just how deep the “roots of rhythm” Simon sings about elsewhere on the album truly reach.

“Graceland” further sets itself apart by its deft pattern of alternating between jubilant and sorrowful tones in both music and lyrics, often within the same song. This is exemplified nowhere better than in the opening track, “The Boy in the Bubble.” As the central accordion riff jumps from a frenetic minor to a celebratory major key, Simon’s opening narrative about a terrorist bombing gives way to a declaration that “[t]hese are the days of miracle and wonder,” encouraging the audience to keep their chin up in

spite of all the trouble in the world. Throughout the following narratives about rich girls and poor boys falling in love, archangels filing for divorce, and people newly placed in strange worlds, “Graceland” further stresses the importance of maintaining hope in the face of adversity.

However, Simon’s message, genuine as it was, still risked being undermined by the intensity of the adversity waiting right outside the studio door. The decision to record and source talent from South Africa — in defiance of the United Nations-instituted cultural boy-

Even today, with apartheid relegated to a historical subject, “Graceland” remains partly overshadowed by the notion of cultural subjugation, albeit now through appropriation. Although he worked in direct respectful cooperation with the Black South African musicians during production, paying them handsomely and giving them writing credits where he felt they were due (with Phiri later insisting that “we used Paul as much as Paul used us”), Simon still effectively co-opted their musical traditions into his usual songwriting style, with occasionally questionable and offensive results emerging from the cultural clash. (“Under African Skies,” a

duet between Simon and guest Linda Ronstadt, is perhaps the most obvious example, opening with a verse that romanticizes the African homeland — as sung by two white Americans.)

Despite the baggage its circumstances of production carry, “Graceland” still remains an artful showcase of the music and culture of an often overlooked corner of the world, bearing a resonant message. With this generation facing ever greater challenges that threaten everyone, Simon and company’s insistence on the need to keep hope alive is needed more than ever, even if Simon’s guiding choice to put art before politics puts its present legacy in question. Maybe the notion of art for art’s sake can eventually reconcile with the idea of music as a force for change, and “Graceland” can find its place in today’s world — but for now, as Simon says, “we’ll just have to wait and confer.”

Time-Warped Records is a new column dedicated to retrospective reviews of music albums at least 10 years old, submitted by reader request. To suggest an album for review, please email Alden Parker ‘26 at abparker26@amherst.edu.

Photo courtesy of maniadb.com

In his inaugural edition of Time-Warped Records, Alden Parker ’26 reviews Paul Simon’s 1986 album “Graceland,” detailing Simon’s experience recording in South Africa during apartheid.

Graphic courtesy of Brianne LaBare ’25

Album cover of Paul Simon's 1986 magnum opus, ”Graceland.“

A Tale of Two Theses: Seniors Perform in Buckley

Madeline Lawson ’25 Managing Arts & Living Editor

On Feb. 4 in Buckley Recital Hall, the Music Department presented two senior theses: “The Second Seed,” a composition thesis by Sam Wright ’23, and “Einheitswanderschaft,” a vocal performance thesis by Patrick Spoor ’23. Wright’s “The Second Seed” began the show.

“The Second Seed”

“The Second Seed” follows a brother and sister longing to escape into the woods, ultimately ending in the brother’s death. Wright, a music and math major, composed the lyrics and instrumentation for the performance, taking inspiration from Korean and Scottish folk music, as well as 20th century minimalism. The performance included four singers and several musicians on piano, keyboard, percussion, violin, viola, cello, bassoon, and flute. Wright played the piri, a double-reeded instrument often used in Korean folk music. Composition itself is a difficult endeavor; composing for so many different instruments and voices is a feat. Wright was successful in transporting the listener from a country scene bathed in sunlight, to a mourning forest, to a hopeful,

yet bittersweet, resolution.

The nine-movement performance began with Annika Paylor

’24 singing brightly over a joyful symphony. Their performances brought the audience into the story and evoked a vivid natural scene. Wright continued that tone, singing as a boy describing his dreams of exploring the world. By the end of his solo, a discordant melody prevailed, which was then picked up by Phoebe Neilsen ’25, who sang the part of his sister. The performance became somber and reflective as the girl lamented her own lost dreams: “Could that be me? / Could I be free?” She eventually concludes that her brother “dreams for both of [them].”

The fourth singer, Tyler Fields ’25, sang above a haunting string melody, narrating the death of the brother within the forest. All four singers sang the funeral song, “Pyre.” The instrumentation was particularly striking — the bassoon and flute, two instruments which rarely have such somber melodies, mourned together.

The music began to pick up, hopeful amidst the bitterness, with light violin pizzicato ushering the listener to the final piece, “For the Next Ones.” The performers were met with roaring applause as the piece ended.

Wright said that the narrative went through several different iterations before he settled on the final product. “In its first incarnation, it would be the story of my grandma, who escaped from North Korea.” However, he felt that he didn’t have the time to do the story justice. He decided to write a fable that started as a retelling of a Korean folktale, in which a brother and sister flee up a tree and become the sun and moon after the death of their mother. He revised that story to produce “The Second Seed,” explaining, “The brother and sister are still there from that story, but I made it my own story and tried to keep some themes of escapism [that were] left over from the story of my grandma.”

Wright remarked that the unique education he received at Amherst left him well-equipped to pursue his composition career, and much of his inspiration came from specific classes he took at Amherst. He also noted that his thesis advisor, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music Eric Sawyer, was instrumental to his thesis. “Him and Professor [of Music Klara] Moricz and the Music Department has been really supportive of me.” After graduation, Wright plans to continue practicing music and composition in some capacity, either through graduate study or as a personal endeavor.

“Einheitswanderschaft”

After the premiere of Wright’s thesis, Patrick Spoor debuted “Einheitswanderschaft,” their vocal performance thesis. Spoor, a music major, aimed to portray a soul wandering the world and witnessing all that humanity has to offer. The theme of “Einheit,” or unity among all peoples, connected the arrangement.

Spoor sang for almost an hour by themself in German, French, and Spanish, accompanied only by piano for all except one piece. Their first piece, Franz Schubert’s “Der Wanderer,” showcased their gentle, yet clear, voice by dreaming to explore the Earth. The next piece was Schubert’s “Abschied,” which means farewell. Spoor noted

that they placed that in the middle of the program rather than at the end to signify a journey’s beginning, bidding farewell to their old life. It was a jaunty piece that allowed Spoor’s stage presence to shine. They seemed to be pulling the audience in and bidding us farewell, with excitement lighting up their face.

Their next piece, Maurice Ravel’s “Don Quichotte à Dulcinée,” was more reflective. It included three parts, which were uplifting and bore witness to the world’s love, but were also tinged with melancholy. The piece concluded with a drinking song filled with impressive arpeggios.

The tone shifted dramatically with Armando Getilucci’s “Canti da Estravagario di Pablo Neruda.” Spoor was accompanied by an ensemble with oboe, violin, viola, and cello players, in addition to piano. The ensemble was conducted by Senior Lecturer in Music Dr. Mark Swanson. Spoor read the three poems they would perform, “La Desdichada,” “Punto,” and “Con Ella,” translated into English. The accompaniment played solemnly while Spoor sang the mourning atonal pieces. The wanderer seemed to be in awe of the horrors they had seen in the world, with “Punto” emphasizing heavy moments: “There is no space wider than that of grief /

there is no universe like that which bleeds” (trans. Alastair Reid).

Spoor concluded their thesis with “Nachtzauber,” by Hugo Wolf, once again accompanied only by piano. Even after nearly an hour of singing, their voice was still smooth and clear. The wanderer had finally found a place to settle down, and it was a hopeful, yet world-weary, end to the program. They also received a standing ovation.

Vocal theses are rare, and Spoor emphasized that every piece was incredibly fun to learn, although they spent a long time perfecting their French for “Don Quichotte à Dulcinée.” Their natural range is baritone, in between the standard bass and tenor ranges, and they noted that it’s a challenge to find suitable pieces for their voice. “A lot of pieces are just slightly out of my range … so I’ve been trying to extend that, and that’s probably my biggest challenge as a singer.”

Spoor gave their acknowledgements to their thesis advisor, Professor Moricz, and their vocal instructor, Tom Oesterling. Like Wright, they might study music in graduate school, and they are considering non-profit work as well. They emphasized that they, like Wright, will continue to pursue any musical opportunities that they can.

“The Second Seed," the composition thesis of Sam Wright ’23, featured four vocalists and an instrumental ensemble.

Photo courtesy of Madeline Lawson ’25

“Einheitswanderschaft,” the vocal thesis of Patrick Spoor ’23, featured a vocal performance backed by piano and a small instrumental group.

Photo courtesy of Madeline Lawson ’25

The New “Avatar” is an All-American Blockbuster

Ross Kilpatrick ’24E Staff Writer

“Avatar: The Way of the Water” is the quintessential American blockbuster. It is an empty, shiny piece of machinery, perfectly calibrated to please American audiences. The movie feels oppressively American, not in its plot, but in its perspective and world.

The new “Avatar” takes place some years after the first. Jake Sully and Neytiri now have a large Na’vi family, including a very bored-sounding Sigourney Weaver and two sons who I kept mixing up, one of whom sounded like an 18-year-old frat boy. After a brief introduction in the jungle, the Sully family flee to a distant water clan, pursued by the marines from the last film who have been resurrected as Na’vi to hunt down Jake.

Jake Sully narrates large portions of the movie, which gives the entire film a distinctly American twang. Throughout most

of it, he sounds like he would fit better in a recruitment ad for the Marines, and at any moment might begin reciting slogans.

“The few, the brave, the blue.” He doesn’t say that. But he does say, “our family is our fortress,” which might as well be a Marine slogan.

But it’s not just because of Jake’s all-too-American narration that the movie feels American.

Throughout the film, there’s an instance on violence as a panacea, and a vacuous show of multiculturalism that feels steeped in American melting pot ideals.

There’s Jake Sully’s oppressively heterosexual nuclear family.

And there’s the film’s shyness of foreign language, and its default assumption that people speak English. When the Sullys arrive at a foreign water clan, the new tribe immediately begins speaking English, and besides a little bit of weird underwater sign language, there’s no hint that these are a foreign people, with a different native language.

All of this results in a movie that feels American, even though any obvious signs of its Americanness have been rubbed off. The film might posture as un-American, as somehow global and environmental and progressive — it’s not. It’s Middle American and barely liberal. There are large, rambunctious families, and children that act a lot like children raised in a house on capitalist Earth. The movie is so buttoned-up, so pseudo-religious, that its world feels like it was made for nuclear families like Jake Sully’s, even if they are dipped in the aesthetic of Indigenous people. But if they weren’t blue, the Sullys would very much fit into any suburban house. They could go to church on Sundays and take their kids to soccer games. I can easily imagine Jake Sully grabbing a beer and watching the game. There’s Neytiri making a dinner casserole. They pray, yes to a weird tree or underwater coral, but it’s all really the same. They’re the family that

has a Coexist bumper sticker and a Prius, even though Jake is former military and he’s got a bit of a conservative edge.

This is the blockbuster movie that America dreamed of, in which a very American family — multicultural and maybe broadly liberal in some ways, but still very traditional — plays the central role, and gets to be the hero. It’s the idle daytime fantasy of most of the country. Nine to five, people will fantasize about being Jake Sully, married to Neytiri; about being different, but not really; about fighting for something so nondescript as to be totally righteous: for family and the fate of the world.

This magnificent trick, of crafting a blockbuster movie so generically American, was accomplished by rubbing off everything singular about the movie. Anything that might stir the human spirit — anything that might appeal to what is odd in us, what is ugly in us, what is beautiful in

us — has been obliterated by the force of all its bland quality, by an overwhelming show of sheer craftsmanship, by its obvious, excessive prettiness. There is no fear, there is no sadness, there is no love. There is a gesture towards the sex appeal of near-naked blue bodies, swimming and fighting and hunting and touching, but without any eroticism. There are no sex scenes. There is a gesture towards true violence, towards pain and bloodiness and war, but without any actual blood, without any real death. We are shown hundreds of dead soldiers, with relatively little remorse or reflection. All that’s left is the subterranean, conflicting desires and values of all Americans: lust that won’t express itself, overwhelming self-righteousness, complete freedom and total devotion to family. We may not like this movie — I certainly don’t. But it’s all our fault. “Avatar” is nothing more than what we already wanted.

“Avatar: The Way of Water ” is the eagerly anticipated sequel to “Avatar ,” but left some fans wanting more. Ross Kilpatrick ’24E criticizes the film’s use of propaganda and uninspired writing.

Photo courtesy of newsfilter.gr

The Indicator ×

THE STUDENT

These pieces were initally published in The Indicator’s 2022 Fall issue “Bridges” and are presented here in collaboration with The Indicator.

“A Cross Walk In a Labyrinth”

Dustin Copeland ’25

The Indicator Senior Associate Editor

My mother said that the pedestrian bridge over arrow-straight Route 1 was finally finished and that we were going to stop to talk a walk over it and my brother said what, why, and my mother ignored his deadpan because she had already pulled into some parking lot (how did she know where to park?) and we were already getting out to have a nice little walk. /

I was bemused mostly because I was like at maximum 10 years old, but also by my mother’s insistence that we stop our routine journey home in order to cross and then re-cross a pedestrian bridge. An overpass for people with a parking lot at each end. /

I remembered recently that 70 percent of the planet is parking lot, and also that parking lots are infinite, or at least spherical, and that it is therefore impossible to travel between them. If I cross from one parking lot to another, I have bridged worlds. I no longer need a car, because I broke parking lots. /

The pedestrian bridge over arrow-straight Route 1 was finally finished, and we were going to stop to walk over it —

—What? Why? I wondered.

—What. Why. My brother said.

(I feel as if I am building this, not writing (is all writing building? Have I been doing this wrong? I can’t seem to start this story) but assembling it from parts that I want desperately to become music

— An overpass for people with a parking lot at each end, but our car is only at one. Ten-year-old me is pretty bemused by the inexplicability of my mother’s will, but it is my mother’s will.

It can’t have been for family bonding that she pulled us over; don’t you need someplace beautiful for that? That part of Route 1 was the least beautiful stretch of road I had ever seen up to that point. Maybe it still is. It could have been for /

I remembered recently the roar of the outside is a black-soot river’s version of power noise, a twisted and boring Merzbow. A real river is closer to zen, closer to his music, an arrangement of sounds and colors and birds. Jumbled and confusing but overpoweringly centered. Embodied by the mind turning clear, experiencing as a body the music; what if I made you hear this as music?

“A School Day along 城門河

Along the banks of 城門河 are flower beds, bike lanes, and concrete paths, and a class of P.E. students are huffing through their mile run. An old man with his fanny-pack radio strolls by, swinging and clapping his arms. One of the girls sweats past him and wonders if swinging her arms like that would propel her forward in this deathly test of fitness.

Nowhere else in the world would the dirty water they’re running along be deemed a river, but in this part of the island-peninsula-city of Hong Kong, surrounded by government housing, old factory buildings, and tiny apartments, this waste-passing canal is 城門 River.

The eighth grade girls PE class is from a school on the other bank. Three seniors from the same school are under a bridge with a camera — their big brothers and big sisters — hiding from the humid April sun. They’re trying to shoot a short film.

“Have you seen ‘Cléo from 5 to 7?’” asks the student filmmaker, an emerging auteur (who’s learning la langue française). “At the end of the film, they walk towards the hospital where she’s about to find out the results of her biopsy. She probably has cancer, and he’s probably going to die in war. But right now they’re walking, and looking at each other, and the camera walks with them. I want you to walk just like that, out of the shadow of this bridge and into the sunlight. The camera will take a while to adjust to the changing exposure, so you need to hold your gaze. Walk slowly. You’ll think it’s way too slow but on camera it looks normal, got it?”

Our actors don’t know what the short film is about, for the student filmmaker heard that 王家衛, the famous Hong Kong auteur, shot a whole film while his actors didn’t know which character they were playing. That man is a genius, and our auteur thinks she’s somewhat of a genius, too. So all our actors know is that they’re going to walk as if to their deaths, or to the prognosis of their deaths.

The girl and the boy have never had a prognosis of death, but they’ve been newly flushed in love (in real life, not in the short film, though perhaps also in the short film — the student filmmaker hasn’t told them yet), and are waiting for a prognosis of love. They haven’t decided what to do with their love, or if it is truly love, which our auteur loves. She imagines that their indecision, their pushing and pulling, will sparkle in the space between their gaze and electrify the screen, that as the sun shines into the lens and washes the shot with white, this shimmer of hopeful anxiety, of lovely pain, will be as magical as the blurry dolly rails in the French film she’s referencing.

In the DVD extras of “Cléo from 5 to 7,” director Agnès Varda said they reshot the final scene when they realized that the dolly track (on which the camera was steadily moved to walk with the lovers) was visible in frame. So they reshot the scene, but the magic was ruined. It was not the same. Cléo’s eyes did not flicker up and down in the same way, the close-mouthed sigh of her shoulders tingeing her smile with something of a grimace. José’s flared nostrils did not swing into view as he turned his head, nor did it shake a little, as it did before, as if unsettled by the great force of looking at her. They reshot the scene, but it was not the same, so the clean, dolly-less shot was scrapped and the mistake was immortalized in the final, most memorable scene of this masterpiece.

If we were shooting this at any other time, our student auteur thought, if we were filming this walk by 城門 河 at any other time, it would not be the same. A month ago the couple had not yet been flushed in love — what they’re pretty sure is love — and were still preening and puffing and turning away. A month later and they might have untangled their indecision, either tending to soft-cut wounds, or resting comfortably in a more familiar gaze. Now, our auteur thinks, now is the perfect time.

You can read the rest of these stories on our website, amherststudent.com.

Priscilla Lee ’25 The Indicator Senior Associate Editor

”

Sports

Around the Herd: The Winter in Sports So Far

Alex Noga ’23 Managing Sports Editor, Emeritus

While most of the student body remained off-campus over the January term, Amherst’s winter-season student-athletes remained on campus and hard at work representing the college in athletic competition. Catch up on their results in this J-term edition of Around the Herd.

Women’s Hockey

The women’s hockey team, currently ranked No. 1 in the nation, have been on an absolute tear all season. This year’s team has set a program record with 18 consecutive victories, a streak that only recently came to an end with a narrow 5-4 loss against Colby on Saturday, Feb. 4, the team’s second loss of the season. The previous record was set by the 2015-16 team, who won 14 games in a row and finished with a 22-3-3 record.

Natalie Stott ’26 has been sensational in her debut season between pipes for the Mammoths. Recently awarded the Mammoth of the Month award after, allowing just eight goals in 10 games during the month of January, Stott has recorded seven shutouts this season with a stellar .937 save percentage and leads the nation with 18 wins.

On the offensive end, Rylee Glennon ’24 has led the way with 24 points — the most by any player in the NESCAC — followed closely by Maeve Reynolds ’26 and Kate Pohl ’23, who have 22 and 21 points, respectively, and are the third and fourth leading point scorers in the conference. On the backend, senior captains Leslie Schwartz ’23 and Avery Flynn ’23 have each recorded 18 points through the team’s 21 games. Flynn’s 15 assists tie her with Glennon for the NESCAC lead, while Schwartz’s 13 assists is the third most of any player in the NESCAC.

The Mammoths, now 19-20, have just three regular season games remaining over the next two weeks, including a homeand-away series against Williams on Friday, Feb. 17, and Saturday, Feb. 18. They sit firmly in first place in the NESCAC with a conference record of 122-0. The first round of the NESCAC postseason tournament begins on Saturday, Feb. 25.

Men’s Hockey

The men’s hockey team has had a busy month this January, playing 10 total games and facing seven NESCAC opponents. After two losses and a tie to start the month, the Mammoths rallied to go on a six-game winning streak, with five of their six wins coming against NESCAC teams. Including their games against Bowdoin and Colby this past weekend, on Friday, Feb. 3, and Saturday, Feb. 4, respectively, the Mammoths are now 13-4-3 overall and 11-2-1 in NESCAC play.

The Mammoths have been a strong defensive team all year, as they are tied with Trinity for the fewest number of goals allowed this season among teams in the NESCAC with just 37 goals allowed through 20 games. Matt Toporowski ’25 and Ben Kuzma ’25 lead the team in points with 15 each. Toporowski’s 10 goals on the year are the fourth most for any player in the NESCAC. Though three goaltenders have recorded wins this year, Alex Wisco ’24 has been leaned on the most, starting 14 total games with a 9-4-1 record and a .918 save percentage.

Though they are currently third in the NESCAC standings, only two points separate Amherst and the NESCAC leader, Trinity. The Mammoths now enter a crucial final two weeks of the regular season, playing four NESCAC opponents in their final regular season games before

the conference tournament begins on Saturday, Feb. 25.

Women’s Basketball

After a strong start to the season, in which they won their first seven games of the year, the women’s basketball team saw mixed results over winter break, going 7-7 overall and 3-5 in NESCAC play.

The Mammoths began their winter break with a trip to the west coast, first participating in the D3Hoops.com Classic tournament in Las Vegas, Nevada, before traveling to Chapman University in California for another two games. The Mammoths won their first game in Vegas but weren’t quite so lucky in their second, falling in a double-overtime thriller to Concordia College. They had similar results in California, winning their first game against Whittier College but losing to Chapman University the following day.

In their 11 games since returning to the Pioneer Valley, the Mammoths have gone 6-5, posting a 3-5 in-conference record. Currently sixth in the NESCAC standings, they face an

important final two home games against NESCAC opponents this upcoming weekend, taking on Colby on Friday, Feb 10, and Bowdoin on Friday, Feb 11, to improve their seeding before the NESCAC tournament.

Men’s Basketball

The men’s basketball team began their winter break schedule with a trip to California to take on UC-Santa Cruz, a game that they lost by just two points, 58-56. Upon returning to Western Massachusetts, the Mammoths embarked on the busiest and most important part of their schedule, playing 10 total games in the month of January including seven NESCAC opponents. The Mammoths went 4-6 overall in January and 3-4 against NESCAC teams.

After falling to Conn College on Friday, Feb. 3, the Mammoths are now 8-13 overall and 3-5 in NESCAC play. The Mammoths, currently seventh in the NESCAC standings, have two critical games against NESCAC opponents remaining on their regular season schedule. They will travel to Maine next weekend to play

Colby on Friday, Feb. 10, and Bowdoin on Saturday, Feb. 11.

Women’s Squash

The No. 15 women’s squash team has been extremely successful since winter break, as their national ranking might suggest. They have played 12 total matches since the fall semester ended and have only lost two, bringing their overall record to 11-4. And most of their wins have come in dominant fashion, as they have lost more than two games only twice in their 10 total match victories. The team’s only losses were a 2-7 defeat against Tufts on Saturday, Jan. 14, and a 4-5 defeat against Williams on Friday, Jan. 27.

Looking forward, the Mammoths will participate in the NESCAC Championships next weekend, on Saturday, Feb. 11, and Sunday, Feb. 12.

Men’s Squash

The No. 19 men’s squash team has had a similarly successful season up to this point in the season. They have played 13 total matches this calendar year and have gone 9-4 over that

The women’s hockey team is currently ranked No. 1 in the country.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Mammoths Train, Compete, and Win in January

span, pushing their record to 11-5 overall. Aside from a 1-8 loss to Williams on Friday, Jan. 7, all of the Mammoths’ other three losses were tightly contested 4-5 defeats.

Senior captain Robinson Armour ’23 was named Mammoth of the Month for his outstanding performances in January. Armour opened the month with a nine-match winning streak and went 10-1 overall in January. He dropped just 2 of the 32 games en route to his 10 wins, eight of which came in three-game sweeps.

Like the women’s team, the Mammoths have concluded the regular season portion of their schedule and will participate in the NESCAC Championships next weekend in Williamstown, Massachusetts.

Men’s and Women’s Swim and Dive

Amherst’s swim and dive teams had an incredibly busy

winter break, participating in five of their eight regular season meets and taking a team training]trip to Puerto Rico in January.

The No. 23 women’s swim and dive team won three of their five dual meets over break, defeating Union College on Dec. 31, Conn College on Jan. 21, and Springfield College on Jan. 29 on the team’s Senior Day. Their two losses came against Williams and MIT. Overall, the Mammoths conclude their regular season with an impressive 6-2 record in dual meets.

The No. 19 men’s swim team has had similar amounts of success, winning two of their five meets over break to push their overall record to 5-3. The men’s team hit a speed bump after defeating Union College on Dec. 31, as they lost their next three meets before finally defeating Springfield College on Jan. 29.

Next on the schedule for both teams is the NESCAC Cham -

pionships. The women’s tournament begins this week on Thursday, Feb. 9, running until Sunday, Feb. 12, and takes place in Brunswick, Maine. The men’s team has a longer preparation time, as their tournament is not scheduled to begin until the following week and runs from Thursday, Feb. 16, until Sunday, Feb. 19.

Men’s and Women’s Track

The winter track season has gotten into full swing while most students were enjoying their time away from campus. The teams kicked off the season at the Little Three Championships on Saturday, Jan. 14, where the men’s team placed first for the second time in consecutive years, winning 10 out of the 17 events, and the women’s team placed second. Both teams also competed in the Middlebury Winter Classic and Middlebury’s New England Small College Invitational, with strong individual performanc -

es from both the men’s and the women’s teams. Most recently, the Mammoths traveled to Medford, Massachusetts, to compete in the Tufts Cupid Challenge, where the men’s team placed second out of nine total times and

the women’s team placed second out of 14 total teams.

Up next on the schedule is the Hemery Valentine Invitational at Boston University, which is scheduled to begin on Friday, Feb. 10.

Photo courtesy of Clarus Studios

Men’s track and field placed first at the Little Three Championships, and the women's team placed second.